Queens is a borough of many streams. It has numerous creeks, basins, inlets, bays, and rivers. Deeper inland are a few ponds, remnants of the last ice age, a respite from the chaotic urban development that surrounds them. The eastern half of Queens in particular still has ponds, tucked away deeply in forested parks and amid the suburban sprawl.

Bowne Pond is located in eastern Flushing, named after a landowning family from the colonial period. The park is named after Walter Bowne, a Queens resident who served as NYC mayor from 1829 to 1833. The site of the 11.8 acre Bowne Park once had his summer residence, which burned down in 1925.

The pond can be found on 32 Avenue between 155 and 159 Streets.

Ear-shaped Tort Totten peninsula sticks out at the confluence of East River, Long Island Sound, and Little Neck Bay. On the border between the peninsula and the mainland, there are two small nameless ponds.

Fort Totten was initially called Willet's Point, not to be confused with the other Willets Point where the Mets play baseball. In 1862, the army bought the peninsula from the Willet family and it served as an active army base until 1974. Fortunately, neither the British, Confederates, Spaniards, nor Germans ever invaded and it was a silent sentinel.

As a fort, it was a self-contained community, with unique street names, and its own zip code. Nobody lives here today. The site is split between the Coast Guard, police K-9 training, firefighter training, and a 49-acre public park. Fort Totten is the site of the August 2011 World Police and Fire Games, where athletic rescuers and their dogs compete.

In the 1960s, the army base was the proposed site for CUNY's York College, but local leaders protested arguing that low-income students needed a school that is closer to public transportation. Downtown Jamaica was chosen instead.

To this day, some of the borough's toniest housing can be found along a stretch of shoreline from Malba towards Little Neck.

This pond is located at the eastern end of 35 Avenue.

Oakland Lake is located in a ravine in Bayside. It was also once called Douglas Pond after a local landowning family. They also developed nearby Douglaston. Oakland took its name from "The Oaks," estate of Frederick Newbold Lawrence, who also descended from a local colonial settler family.

In 1896, his estate became a golf course, and in turn, it became CUNY's Queensborough Community College in the 1960s.

The lake was is subject to algae and silting and still requires plenty of care to ensure its preservation.

This pond can be found at Springfield Boulevard and 46 Avenue.

Aurora Pond is located in the Udalls Cove Preserve on the Queens-Nassau border in Little Neck.

The pond's namesake is local resident Aurora Gareiss, who fought to save the ravine around Udall's Cove from development. The pond was formed when Sandhill Road was paved through the ravine. Excess water flows into the cove through Garbler's Creek.

This pond can be found at the bend on Sandhill Road near Douglas Road.

Long before urban development, the valley separating Bayside from Douglaston was known as "The Alley," and like Flushing Meadows, it is a valley and salt marsh with its own forgotten streams and ponds. Within the 635-acre Alley Pond Park, there are 8 named ponds. The map on the left shows seven of them plus nearby Oakland Lake.

The names reflect local flora and fauna: Turtle Pond, Muskrat Pond, Lily Pad Pond, Cattail Pond, Windmill Pond, Little Alley Pond, and Alley Pond. All were formed as kettle lakes after the last ice age.

The construction of the Long Island Expressway and Cross Island Parkway nearly erased Alley Pond from the map, more on that below. On this map, the pond is covered by the compass rose.

The Great Depression put an end to the two-lane speedway, which ran from Fresh Meadows to Ronkonkoma. From 1908 to 1911, the parkway hosted racing, but deadly results led to a ban.

If I had my way, there would be an annual world-class race on the Long Island Expressway- Riverhead to Midtown. All speed demons would be welcome to apply, but I know it will never happen.

The parkways cross paths in the park, with the elder overshadowed by the heir. Grand Central Parkway opened in July 1933 between Kew Gardens and the city line. The parkway has no relation to the famed train terminal in Midtown, and its architecture is strictly utilitarian.

At the county line, Grand Central Parkway becomes Northern State Parkway, running east in twists and turns towards Hauppauge.

Only broken segments remain of Motor Parkway, as a bike trail in Queens, power line right-of-way in Nassau, and a road in Suffolk.

Little Alley Pond is hidden in the summer by reeds, but it has a long history of some 15,000 years since a loose block of ice sunk into the ground and formed this pond.

Muskrat Pond is even smaller in size, but like many kettle ponds, it can be deep. During the rainy seasons, it expands, but it never completely disappears.

Birdhouses line the southern edge of the park on Kingsbury Avenue. When you consider Fort Totten, Udall's Cove, Alley Pond Park, Douglaston Park Golf Course, Queens County Farm Museum, and Creedmoor Psychiatric Center, it is clear that eastern Queens has a series of connected parks that act as travel corridors for airborne and land-based wildlife.

The large parks and preserves of Queens are stopovers for long-distance birds on the Atlantic Flyway. It is one of four major air routes used by birds during their seasonal migrations. Some 270 species of migrating birds have been spotted visiting Central Park. Now that's tourism!

This 1927 Red Book map of the proposed street grid only makes a small concession for Alley Pond Park. The green line superimposed on the map shows the approximate boundaries of the present-day park. It's interesting to see how little concern urban planners gave to public parkland.

Their main care was to cover the borough with thousands of identical rectangular boxes, erasing the unique villages and colonial-period paths that once dotted the landscape. Marvina Reynolds couldn't have said it better:

"And they're all made out of ticky tacky
And they all look just the same."

-Little Boxes, 1962

The first incarnation of Long Island Expressway was Nassau Boulevard, which had a dramatic arch bridge proposed in 1929 to span across Alley Pond. But in reality, a simple beam bridge rises above The Alley.

Below, a 1998 and a 2008 aerial show the improved LIE-Cross Island interchange and the restored Alley Pond. Two of the cloverleaf's leaves have been removed, but their traces are still visible from space.

Aerial composite courtesy of Todd Berkun's Facebook page "Places in NYC That are no More"

Before we head south on Cross Island Parkway, let's take note of a few more forgotten ponds. Just north of the Cross Island-Grand Central Parkway interchange is an unusual modernist Catholic institution: Immaculate Conception Center, previously known as Cathedral College. Designed as a college for future priests, it moved to Douglaston in 1967, peaking in the 1970s, but then suffering a decline in applicants. During its peak, a promotional video was made showing life for priests in 1970s New York City. The college closed in 1987, but the campus still serves the church.

The cash-starved church sold some of the land around its seminary in 1989, which resulted in the Oak Park development (below right). To its east is an earlier enclave, Castlewood, which dates back to around 1954. Here, a small segment of 72 and 73 Avenues connect to nothing. A third site across Grand Central Parkway is Iris Hill, an undeveloped 7.5 acre site that the state recently transferred to the Association for Neurologically Impaired Brain Injured Children (ANIBIC), which plans to develop the wooded site.